Energy efficiency and conservation are becoming an increasingly important issue because the demand for energy is constantly increasing, while the dominant energy supplies—various types of fossil fuels—are steadily dwindling. As a result, energy costs will only grow with time, steadily gaining a larger percentage of both residential and commercial building budgets. In addition, because the majority of energy is produced from fossil fuels, the increased use of this energy source adversely affects the environment, contributing to global warming through the release of carbon oxide gases. Improvements in energy efficiency are most often achieved by adopting a more efficient technology or processes, although changes in individual behavior may also result in reduced energy use.
For many years, complicated, expensive systems have been used to lower the usage and costs of energy. However, these approaches have proved to be too expensive and complicated for small businesses and residential consumers. As a result, consumers are not concretely incited to lower the energy consumption.
A challenge faced by the utilities and consumers in attempting to reduce energy consumption (gas and/or electric), is the lack of efficient and real-time measures for encouraging sustainable behavior of the actual consumer. For instance, it would be of value to the consumer to know that any action lowering or optimising energy consumption is taken into account by the central station and the associated billing system. Some automatic meter reading systems can be used to control quantitative data related to the energy consumption. Automatic meter reading systems are typically provided with a communication module, for instance a wireless module, and comprise a battery-powered encoder that collects meter readings, the collected data being periodically transmitted over a communication network to a central station.
Today's systems eventually provide some pieces of information back to the consumer, for instance on command by the consumer or real-time through a specific apparatus for reading real-time consumption data. A back-office solution called “AMR Hosting” allows a user to track his/her electricity, water, or gas consumption over the Internet. All data is collected in near real-time, and is stored in a centralized database by high-end data acquisition software. The user can view the data via a secure web application, and can analyze the data using various online analysis tools. The user can easily chart load profiles, analyze tariff components, and verify his/her utility bill. Google™ PowerMeter is an example of this type of web-based tool.
However, it would be useful to offer in a variety of settings (i.e., building environments/conditions), including home and office, a large freedom to the consumers, while encouraging an optimized energy consumption of the home appliances and light sources.
Accordingly, there is a need for an automatic energy metering system for collecting data from metering units located close to the point of use or consumption, which efficiently incites the consumer to have a better behavior when using energy and does not fail to respect user priorities.